by Colin Watson
“The fourth explosion did not follow the pattern established by the earlier ones. For one thing, it seems to have been the most violent of all. It was not staged in a public place, nor was it directed against a monument or symbol. An exhibitionist motive is not discernible.
“Moreover, it cost a human life.
“I conclude from these points of difference that the fourth explosion occurred spontaneously and accidentally.
“That brings us to its victim, Mr Stanley Biggadyke.
“It was his caravan in which the explosive substance lay—unless, of course, he had taken it with him when he left his car that night. In any case, he alone had access to the caravan, so we must presume that he was responsible for the explosive being there.
“That presumption is strengthened to virtual certainty when we take into consideration this fact. On all the nights when the first three explosions were engineered Mr Biggadyke had deliberately given a false account of his whereabouts and had even arranged for his story to be borne out by his friend, Mr Smiles, who today very rightly repudiated it.
“It is no part of my duty to accuse the deceased of activities for which he might have been called to account in a court of justice. But in so far as those activities provide the only explanation of his death that seems tenable, I must express my view that Mr Biggadyke was the person responsible for the explosions on the third, seventeenth and twenty-fourth of June, and that he unintentionally caused the one which killed him in his caravan a week later.
“My verdict, accordingly, is death by misadventure.”
“And no one,” the man from the Daily Sun murmured to Mr Kebble, “could say fairer nor that.”
Chapter Twelve
Mr Kebble could not remember when last a policeman had bought him a drink. It was therefore with a feeling of pleasurable awe that he accepted the brandy that Inspector Purbright brought to their table in the Nelson and Emma.
“So it’s all over, old chap,” said Kebble, having plunged his brandy into a half tankard of water and pledged the inspector’s health.
“It looks rather like it.”
“You’ll be going back now, I suppose. I’m sorry.”
“That’s nice of you, Mr Kebble. Actually, though, I shall probably hang on for a few more days. Chalmsbury’s quite an attractive little town.”
Kebble beamed, but about his eyes was a flicker of inquisitiveness. “What do you want, a list of the places of interest?”
“I have my own list, as a matter of fact. For what it’s worth. I was wondering if you could give me a few directions, though.”
“You don’t want to bother Larch?” Kebble was still smiling.
“Well, I feel that would be somewhat ungracious of me. He’s a busy man, is your chief inspector.”
“Yes, isn’t he?” Kebble sighed and took a slow drink. “All right, then; tell me where you want to go?”
Purbright revolved his glass on the smooth oak table top and eyed the dark, frothless column of beer. It was a sweet, oily local brew that soothed rather than stimulated. “For a start,” he said, “I should like to take a trip into the past life of the gentleman on whose body Mr Chalice has just conducted his admirable inquest.”
“So that’s the sort of tour you’re on, is it?” Kebble had started to clean his nails with a little pearl-handled pen-knife that hung from his watch-chain, and his voice seemed to come through the folds of his chin and neck.
“Idle curiosity,” said Purbright. “This Biggadyke must have been quite a practical joker.”
Kebble chuckled. “They tell me it was Stan who got in here one night after closing time and sawed all the handles off the beer pumps.” He ruminatively surveyed the results of his manicure. “Then there was the beetle, of course. But you’ll have heard about that.”
“Beetle? No, I don’t think so.”
Kebble looked up. “Good lord! Haven’t you really?” He brushed shut the little penknife across his palm. “I thought everyone knew about the Broadbeck beetle. Broadbeck—do you know where that is?”
Purbright shook his head.
“Never mind; it’s a small village just outside the town. Biggadyke’s house is there, next to the parish hall. The hall’s a scruffy little place, but the rural district council has always used it for meetings and about three years ago they had an outside lavatory built—R.D.C. meetings are liable to go on all day, you know. Big was fearfully annoyed because they put the thing bang up to the edge of his garden, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
“Of course the councillors were like kids with a new toy to begin with. Even after two or three months it still seemed to fascinate them. They kept popping in and out of council as if they didn’t trust each other not to pinch the damn thing.
“It would be about the fourth monthly meeting after it was built that I could see something queer had happened. The councillors were taking it in turn as usual to slope off when things got a bit dull and I happened to notice one of them come back looking pale and worried as hell. Then another tottered in a bit later in the same state. I kept an eye open after that and damn me if five or six didn’t come back looking as if they’d seen a ghost.
“When the meeting was over, I thought they’d all get together and talk about whatever had happened outside. But they just shot off home without a word. Actually avoided one another. You’d have thought they’d just been tipped off that the bailiffs had called for the telly.”
Kebble drank some of his brandy and water, glanced solicitously at the level of Purbright’s beer, and went on: “I couldn’t draw as much as a whisper for weeks afterwards. Then quite unexpectedly I got the whole story. It was the R.D.C. medical officer who told me.
“What put him on to it in the first place was the way one or two doctors in town pulled his leg. A bright lot you’ve got on that council of yours, they said to him. How do you mean, he said. Well, they said, half of ’em came rushing round to surgery the other night begging for confidential check-ups.
“The M.O. was tickled to death, naturally. He cornered one of the councillors he was fairly friendly with and wormed the truth out of him. The bloke admitted he’d thought something horrid was wrong with him because when he left the hall and began to pass water he got the most terrible burning and tingling sensation. He hadn’t told anyone, except his doctor, because that wasn’t the sort of thing he’d like spread around. He certainly didn’t know that half the other fellows on the council had had exactly the same experience.”
The editor paused to salute benevolently some new arrival in the tap room. Then he leaned further towards Purbright.
“Suppose,” he said, “that you saw some insect or fly or something on the white porcelain of a urinal stall. Your natural instinct would be to try and flush it down, wouldn’t it? I doubt if you or anyone else would be able to resist it. Well, what the M.O. found when next he was round at the village hall was a little beetle, oh, about that long”—he held up finger and thumb—“just where it would be most tempting.” Kebble gazed admiringly into the middle distance. “He showed it to me; it was beautifully made.”
“Copper?” ventured Purbright. “Soldered to a wire?”
Kebble seemed not to resent the expert short-circuiting of his tale. He smiled dreamily. “Aye, that’s it. And a hole drilled right through, of course. They spotted the battery and the coil, or whatever it was, under Biggadyke’s hedge.” After a while he added: “Bloody good job he didn’t use the mains, wasn’t it?”
Purbright stared out of the window and watched the moving finger of a mast beyond the yard walls and outhouses. “Tide time,” he murmured, obedient already to platitudinous custom.
“Aye,” agreed Kebble. He shuffled off to the bar to buy more drinks.
When he returned the inspector invited him to give further details of Biggadyke’s history, adding that he would accept the playful character of the man without more illustration.
Kebble obliged with the facility of one long drilled in o
bituary composition.
“Let’s see, then,” he began. “He was about forty-eight years old and a native of the town. He went to the Grammar School until he was asked to leave after some trouble with a girl. Big was always a pretty forward lad, which is odd in a way because he was absolutely hideous as a kid and didn’t improve much as he got older. Never mind, he left school and went straight into his uncle’s haulage business. He played around for six or seven years, landed a few more girls into trouble, drank a lot of ale, joined the Rowing Club—you know the sort of thing. Then the old uncle crumbled: they tell me he took to writing backwards, you know. Anyway, he didn’t last long after that and Big got the firm.
“He was no mug, mind. He knew the business by then and soon started to lay in the cash. Big had more sense than to pay for his wild oats out of capital; wine and women were for after office hours. In those days, at least; he relaxed a bit during the war when he was making more money than he knew what to do with. Of course, the business saved him from being called up.
“When did he get married, now? Oh, it must have been just after the war, 1946 maybe. His missus used to be one of the Jackson girls. Pretty, simpering little thing. I’ll bet you didn’t hear any girlish giggles from her today, though. She’s spent the last ten years cooped up on her own in that whopping great ideal home exhibition out at Broadbeck. Big only used the place for sleeping, and not every night either.”
“Any children?” Purbright asked.
The editor shook his head. Then he picked up his tankard and stared into it, tipping it slowly from side to side. “There’s not much else I can tell you. As a matter of fact, the fellow was rather a dull number when you get down to a straight life story. We’ve quite a few of the same kind here. Not quite old enough to hoard their pennies and become respectable, but too old to play the fool without getting everybody’s back up. You’d never believe the number of bald heads and pot bellies among that Rowing Club mob. One heave at an oar and they’d drop dead. It’s all tankards and totty-tickling, old chap. Bloody desperate, if you ask me.”
“Biggadyke wasn’t in the Forces, you said. What about Home Guard or Civil Defence?”
“No, I think the Observer Corps was Big’s war club.”
“I’m just wondering where he might have acquired his taste for explosives.”
“Can’t imagine, old chap.”
“Has that firm of his any connection with quarrying?”
Kebble looked doubtful. “I’d be surprised if it had. It handles agricultural stuff mostly. There’s not a quarry within ten miles of here.”
Purbright sighed. “You see my difficulty, don’t you, Mr Kebble?”
“Oh, I do. Aye.” The editor regarded him with a slightly too wide-eyed expression of sympathy. “You’re trying to trace the...”
“Biggadyke’s source. Exactly. Chalmsbury probably accepts these little diversions as perfectly normal, or at least in character. But what I must call the Authorities take a somewhat jaundiced view. High explosive, Mr Kebble, is the very apotheosis of un-Englishness. And when someone appears to have been in a position to stick free samples of it all over the place the Authorities are naturally concerned.”
“I hadn’t really thought of it like that,” confessed Kebble. “Perhaps we do tend to be easy-going down here.”
“Do you suppose Biggadyke might have known someone who would supply him with explosive? Or did he dream up all his practical jokes by himself?”
“He didn’t know any safe-blowers, so far as I’m aware. Not that I’d rule it out.”
“Had he any special friends?”
“Couldn’t say. Wait a minute, though”—Kebble’s eye had brightened—“male or female?”
“Either.”
Kebble glanced about him, then beckoned Purbright to lean closer. “I’m going to tell you something, old chap, but for God’s sake keep it to yourself.” Again he looked quickly round the room. “That caravan was no more an office than this pub: you probably guessed that. Aye, but I bet you’ll never guess who the totty was that old Big played gypsies with...Mrs Chief Inspector Hector bloody Larch, none other!”
He jerked back in his chair to enjoy the effect of his revelation.
At first, Purbright gave no sign of having heard. Then his lips slowly protruded in a soundless whistle. “Mr Kebble,” he said at last, “this little township deserves to be administered by the Sodom and Gomorrah Joint Sewerage Board.”
The editor nodded delightedly.
“You’re not pulling my leg, are you?” Purbright was suddenly grave.
“Good heavens, no. Poor Leonard’s too dumb to make up a story as good as that.”
“Leonard?”
“The lad you’ve seen in the office. He’s my reporter, or what I try and use for one.”
“And what does he know about it?”
“He watched them together. It was very wicked of him and I fancy he feels rather guilty about it now, but I’m perfectly certain he was telling the truth. He even wrote what he called an ‘exposure’.” Kebble shuddered and reached for his drink.
“When did he see these...goings on?”
Kebble considered. “It was a Tuesday night: now which one?...Oh, yes—when old Barry Hoole’s eye was blown out. I remember the boy saying that he heard the bang when he was just coming away from...Good Lord!” He stared at Purbright. “Then Big must have been in his caravan when the thing went off.”
“Why not? He didn’t need to be there with a match, you know.”
Kebble subsided. “No, I suppose it had a time fuse or something.”
“They all did. The first three, anyway.”
“Aye, of course. Still, it does seem a bit odd to set a bomb ticking and then push off to a date with your totty. Damn me, I’d want to stay and see the fun if it was mine.”
“Do you know Mrs Larch?”
“Not terribly well. She’s Ozzy Pointer’s girl, you know. Quite a good-looking lass but hard boiled. You’ll not get much out of her.”
“I shouldn’t imagine her husband would thank me for trying.”
“No. Quite so.” Kebble looked at him shrewdly. “You might fare better with the old man, though. Ozzy’s an awkward bloke but dead straight. He and his son-in-law don’t hit it off too well, they tell me.”
“Do you think Larch would have known of his wife’s relationship with Biggadyke?”
“God, no! That’s why I told young Leaper to be careful. If Larch did find out he’d go up to Hilda, give her a nice smile, and then slowly pull her head off like a prawn’s.”
“Hasty tempered, is he?”
“Not hasty, old chap. That wouldn’t be so bad. He’s the sort that wouldn’t fall out with you until he’d got a grave dug ready. You want to watch your step with brother Larch.”
Purbright promised that he would indeed.
“Now then,” said Kebble, more cheerfully, “how’s Mrs Crispin looking after you?”
“She’s very”—Purbright groped for a word—“conscientious.”
“Grand. I thought you’d be all right there. You’re on your own except for old Payne, aren’t you? Not that he’d bother you.”
“On the contrary; we get along rather nicely. An ally is always welcome.”
“What, against Mrs Crispin?” Purbright thought Kebble sounded slightly offended.
“No, no; but all lodgings are intimidating, however hard a landlady tries to make one feel at home. In fact it is precisely their homeliness that always alarms me. I half expect to find an embalmed mother propped opposite the teapot.”
“Payne’s been in digs for years,” Kebble said. “He must be an authority.”
“Oh, he copes expertly. But even the most competent, self-possessed lodger is essentially a sad fellow. And Payne is too intelligent to be able to hide it.”
“You’ve spotted that? I’m glad. Sometimes I forget what I think of people—d’you know that? It sounds queer, but life drags on from year to year in a little place like this w
ithout anything happening to confirm an opinion. I mean nobody’s going to give Payne or Barry Hoole a Nobel Prize, for instance, yet there was a time when they seemed absolutely brilliant.”
“Talking of Hoole,” Purbright said, anxious lest Kebble’s sudden lapse into subjective philosophy should prove intractable, “I cannot fathom why he qualified for one of Biggadyke’s infernal machines.”
The editor brightened at once. “Oh didn’t you hear the story?”
He might have known, Purbright reflected, that there would be a story. “No,” he said, “I haven’t heard that one either.”